Quiet Repose

My friend Julia is a singer whose family lives in Madison, so even though she's getting her doctorate in Houston, I still see her every few months when she's home for breaks. she invited Daniel and me to her family's house for lunch yesterday, and we stayed well into the afternoon, and well past Daniel's usual (hah!) naptime. Daniel and Betsy, Julia's 8 lb. dog, played fetch with a tennis ball, and Julia and I did some sight-reading. We are planning to do a program here in April, mostly of pieces she's going to do on a DMA recital in Houston in March, but we may need to substitute a couple of things because of limited rehearsal time. We started off with John Jacob Niles, a native Kentuckian whose arrangements of folk songs are simple, elegant, and beautiful. "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" is one of my favorites and always makes me a little teary. We moved on to a few selections from Fauré's "Le Jardin Clos" and ended with "O Welt" from Mahler's Rückertlieder. It felt so good to play those pieces, even if I'm not in the best shape piano-wise right now. (Sigh. Why do my favorite singers live so far away? Pam, that also means you!)

Daniel fell asleep about thirty seconds after we got in the car to go home. He had a typically tiny nap at first, but was clearly still tired when he woke up. I nursed him back to sleep, and sat there with him in my lap. I assumed he would wake up for good if I tried to put him down, and I expected him to wake up in 20-30 minutes, so I decided to just sit there and hold him, to hell with what the books say. The books haven't done squat for me anyway. The night before had been so frustrating for everyone, I figured he and I both were owed this moment of peace. A half hour went by, then another half hour, and then another. He squirmed and shifted a little, but still slept. The sun started to set, the house got dark, and I just sat there thinking about everything and nothing and listening to him breathe.